


The Conflict

by bothways



Series: Dutiful Sons [2]
Category: Boondock Saints (Movies)
Genre: Daddy Issues, Religious Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 07:52:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11963007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bothways/pseuds/bothways
Summary: Father Donaldson has asked the Saints to intercede on behalf of an abused child. The problem is Noah and his sons have different ideas on how to deal with the situation.





	The Conflict

Noah glanced up briefly as his son pretty much stormed out of the filthy motel room they were staying in, only the presence of the elderly priest he left with keeping in check the rage he clearly felt. As he watched the young man leave the room, he suffered the distinct feeling that he was being punished, that yet again he had let Conner down. There were times, even now, he regretted meeting his sons, the magnitude of his failure to raise them himself seeming too much for him to bear.

He turned his attention back to checking and rechecking his weapons, the familiar actions soothing. As he adjusted his second boot knife so its presence was less obvious, his other boy finally broke the silence. "Expecting trouble?"

"No, just helps to be prepared." The older man said as he reached for his rosary. "Especially when you're dealing with scum."

"How do you know this guy is going to help us then Da?" Noah wondered then if the boy could see how it affected him that carefully placed "Da". Did that damn squeeze in his veins show on his face? Perhaps it was the maelstrom of emotions affecting them all tonight but he found himself sharing information about his closely guarded past.

"We shared a cell, for 4 years. He was just eighteen when he came to Hoag for armed robbery. He was attacked, in the way young men often are in prisons," he paused, uncomfortable with being too explicit, "they put him in Category K with me. He needed protection. It was hard enough to survive in Hoag without getting sentimental about pretty boys but he was your age and I didn't know . . " Noah looked down at his boots. 

"So you think he owes you?"

"He's a double-crossing, thieving punk who'd sell his granny for a dollar but he's a punk I know well. I can tell if he's lying. He'd rather have me on his side than not so to that extent I trust him. He'll watch the target for us, frighten him, keep him away from the child and his mother until the heats died down and we can . . . do the necessary."

"Conner wants to finish the job tonight." Murphy paused, "it would be easier, we'd know it was done right. Wouldn't have to rely on a stranger."

Noah sighed unable to quash the tetchiness he still felt following his older son's abrupt departure to meet the abused child that Father Donaldson had begged them to help, defiance and anger written into every line of his body. It was suddenly clear to him that Murphy, usually the more volatile of the two, was going to play the voice of reason here. He wouldn't kid himself for a second though that in the end Murphy would side with anyone other than his brother. In the seven months he'd known them he'd never seen Murphy go against Conner. In his heart he knew that the time for building a father son relationship where they obeyed his every command without question had passed and therefore he'd be better off explaining his thinking but nearly 30 years working on his own, never having his decisions questioned, made it difficult to follow the careful path that he almost always had to follow with these two. 

"Well, I don't so Conner's going to have to put up with that." He could see Murphy's handsome face screw up in annoyance at that statement. He was clearly having an internal battle between his natural inclination to tell anyone who stood against his brother to "fuck off" and what he considered his duty to God to follow his father's guidance. 

He knew that the boys had had a vision from God about 2 months after they had initially met and shortly before they killed Yakavetta in the Courthouse. They hadn't been forthcoming with details, he supposed visions from deities were private things, he had never shared the details of his messages with them. They'd clashed with him almost from the moment he'd met them, angry at his absence from their lives and clear that they didn't need him now after all this time although oddly prepared to work with him to achieve their common goal of ridding the world of evil. He'd tried to be patient, tried not to demand they listen to his experience, to his knowledge of the men they were chasing. They'd been looking into ridding the world of more of Yakavetta's mafia cronies and he'd made it clear that the target was not to be underestimated, that they needed to watch longer. They'd refused, boyed by the breathtaking confidence and arrogance of young men. Sure enough the target got the drop on them and within minutes his boys were restrained and taking one hell of a beating. He hadn't put up much of a fight and, probably because of his age, he had been underestimated. He'd always been a tough scrapper, growing up on the streets in Ireland but 25 years in the Hoag as the prime target of every mafioso and punk that wanted to make a name for themselves he'd become a mean fighter. He had taken out 5 men with his bare hands just to get to his boys, broken one man's arm on his leg, stamped another's head open with his boot and finally sliced all their throats with his ever-handy boot knife. They'd gotten away but not without injury, Conner had busted his ribs and punctured his lung and this wasn't something they could patch up themselves. He'd called an old backstreet doctor acquaintance of his to help.

He waited a few days for Conner to heal, let his feelings fester in the sweltering dim light of yet another motel room he couldn't leave and it had all burst out just before they were due to depart for Chicago. He was furious at both of them for placing themselves unnecessarily at risk, furious because he'd known as they walked in the house what was going to go down, furious at his failure to protect them just as he had failed to protect them as children. He had raged at them for their lack of foresight, their arrogance and their lack of respect. He had told them for the first time about his own message from the Lord which was to protect them, help them as they would achieve greatness. He had always shied away from telling them about that before in case they mocked him but they seemed to take him seriously and had listened to his rant without interruption. The drive to Chicago had been carried on mostly in silence and they had gone straight to the small apartment Smecker had set up for them there. 

It was the first night in Chicago that had been the most surreal moment for Noah of what had been a pretty exceptional life. His sons had woken him up, come into his bedroom and without saying anything slid simultaneously to their knees as if they were about to pray, backs towards him and facing towards the bed. They removed their shirts and belts and then, completely in sync, they had turned around and handed him their belts. "Children, obey your parents in the Lord," Conner had said, "For this is right" Murphy had finished the sentence.

He'd known what they had wanted him to do but had hesitated. Confused by their warped understanding of what a father/son relationship was meant to be. Oh, he and Sibeal both had had the odd whipping as children but it had played very little part in the reason why he obeyed his father. He had obeyed his father out of love and trust so much so that when the older man had said they needed to leave Ireland on a boat in the middle of the night he had gone then and there leaving behind his precious brother who had started training in the priesthood and starting again in Boston. When his father had started taking in some of the many orphans on the streets of Boston at that time he had just gritted his teeth, pulled his already tight belt even tighter and helped feed them. When his father had stood up to the local mafia but had refused to raise arms against them he'd gone along with it even though he felt deeply uncomfortable. 

When he had looked at them there kneeling before him, backs bared and heads bowed presumably in submission he knew that they were prepared to suffer submitting to this violent stranger who didn't raise them as a part of their faith which he knew was paramount to them both. It had felt in that moment that handing him the belt and Murphy goading him to use it was just another way for the pair of them to keep him at arms' length. Making it clear to him that they would follow him but only because God commands it. Their attitude towards him afterwards had reflected this as well. Polite and distant, he was no longer "Il Duce" or "Old Man" but "sir". His plans were followed to the letter, he was deferred to on every decision and they always walked two paces behind him. They accepted his touches which he found it increasingly hard to hold back but they never touched him back. The boyish camaraderie was still there between the two of them and it spilled over to others they dealt with in their line of work, Smecker, the Boston detectives and their elderly friend Doc even to Sibeal on the phone but they never joked with him, with their saint.

He had led them well over the last 5 months, he knew it. They had carried out God's work diligently and carefully all across America. They had suffered few injuries and never even come close to being caught by the police. All in they had dispatched 176 souls for judgement. He seemed to have developed a God-given knack for seeing the evil in people even when he didn't know them. Something seemed to guide him to the most depraved and evil situations. In the sweltering heat of a small town in Louisiana he had found a man that was keeping eight women hostage in his basement, one had been missing for five years they had later learned on the television.

It therefore grated on him that the boys would question his motives now on this hit. 

Murphy tried to press his point again, making an almost visible effort to do so politely. "The thing is Conner and me know that you are trying to protect us and . . " he paused "and we're grateful for it but we knew there was risk going into this and this is a situation worth risking our safety for. What the motherfucker did was unforgiveable and to his son."

"Forgive me if I'm not so blase about your safety as you are boy." Noah knew the "boy" was going to grate on Murphy's nerves but at this point he didn't care. If they had so little faith in his decisions after everything they had gone through then to hell if he'd be bothered to explain it.

Seven months together and he knew how this boy was going to react to that. Either a blow up or a sullen "yessir". 

"Ain't no fuckin boy, Old Man."

Noah was struck by the not unfamiliar urge to cuff his younger son round the back of the head. He wondered what Murphy would do if he ever acted on such an urge, punch him probably and then go to confession. Murphy started to storm around the room gathering his guns and knife. His movements jerky and aggressive, it suddenly struck Noah that no matter how much he disagreed with him Murphy was still going to go along with his plan. 

"Look son, the real reason I don't want to do it Conner's way is if we act now, we risk both the priest and the boy's mother." Murphy stopped still.

"I don't understand."

"The death will be linked to us whether we leave the pennies or no. Someone so much as shoplifts sweets round here right now and the FBI are investigating its connection to us."

"The boy's father gets murdered straight after or before the boy comes out of hiding, you can bet they are going to investigate a lot more carefully than they have to date where he has been hiding and who hid him. You think Father Donaldson would have covered his tracks carefully enough? The man's used to holding the hands of dying grannies and admonishing boys for impure thoughts not tangling with the FBI."  
"We do this now, without thinking it through, a pound to a penny, either the priest or the mother are accessories to murder. Conner is letting anger and hatred of the crime cloud his judgement. We need to take the time to think it through whilst making sure the child is safe. That's where Maguire comes in."

Murphy seemed to process this information quite quickly. It amazed Noah that he always let Conner take the decisions and followed his plans. Conner was a bright quick thinker and when Noah had first met them he thought maybe Murphy wasn't quite as bright but he had soon discovered his mistake. His younger boy was just as much of a quick thinker as his brother just not as vocal.

"What if this Maguire kills him, haven't we got the same problem?" It was a good question.

"Maguire's not the killing kind. Its not his thing but he'll rough the guy up no problem."

Noah went to the bathroom and when he came back into the room Murphy was back on his knees praying. He found himself slightly irritated by this, now was the time to go set Maguire on the paedophile, they had prayed earlier when taking confession from Father Donaldson. He stared at his son unashamedly and just restrained himself from tapping his foot impatiently. It was a prayer of contrition, Noah recognised it and Murphy was repeating it over and over. It suddenly struck Noah that neither of his sons usually prayed randomly in the middle of the day, that was more his thing, the boys both usually prayed together in the morning and the evening. He wondered what his son was feeling so contrite about. 

It was dangerous and wrong to interrupt a man at prayer but it didn't look like this prayer was helping Murphy much. He couldn't help himself, he walked over to his kneeling boy and touched the top of his head. "Whatever it is lad, I think he understands that you are sorry now." Murphy looked up at him then such a mixture of desperation and longing that he almost wanted to move away from it. Instead he moved towards him and patted his head again awkwardly. 

"I'm sorry Da, "

"Its alright lad, its all new to both of us. Come on, lets get this sorted out before your brother gets back."


End file.
